So, for argument’s sake, let’s pretend the United States is a just and fair society. You might have to stretch your imagination, but that’ll be good mental exercise for you. Now suppose that nearby the United States there is another country, one so inherently evil as to be off-limits to people from the US. Naturally, the United States also feels obligated to encourage the rest of the world to have nothing to do with this nation – because it is such a bad place. You’d have to assume, given the might of the United States and its considerable powers of persuasion both subtle and gross, that the bad country would soon enough be forced to straighten up and fly right. You would be wrong.  About 90 miles south of the peninsula of Florida, lies the largest of all the islands in the Caribbean. Cuba has just about 12 million people, and somehow those people have managed to incur the wrath of the United States more than almost any other nation. Despite that the United States has a long history of supporting some of the most brutal regimes and hideous dictators, Cuba seems to have a special place of loathing in Washington’s eyes.  Astoundingly, Cuba managed to survive a thoroughly botched military incursion from the United States, and continues to thumb its collective nose at an ever-present economic assault. Despite all the exhortations of the United States to condemn and vilify this country, it is plugging along its own path and managing to gain substantial respect from around the world.  Mind you, not all countries heeded the United States’ calls for condemnation and shunning. To its eternal annoyance, its largest trading partner – Canada – has had ties with Cuba continuously. Canada has willingly and vigourously traded with Cuba throughout the embargo period; we engage in joint ventures with them; a former Prime Minister of Canada was a good personal friend of the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro; we help them build gas-powered electrical generating stations. Tourism is a huge source of revenue for Cuba, and most of it comes from our vast and frozen land.  And the other North American country, between which the US is sandwiched, also gets along with Cuba just fine.  So earlier this month, I came back to this place that I had last visited 16 years ago. I don’t know exactly what I expected to see, but I think I imagined that Cuba was finally close to the breaking point. After all, the US embargo had been ongoing for fifty years by now. Surely all those pre-revolutionary US cars would be on their last legs – er, wheels. The man who had led the Cuban revolution, and the country itself since 1959, had stepped down due to ill-health. There is some uncertainty about succession planning, and although Fidel’s brother was elected president in his place, he is not Fidel – a man who holds a special place in the heart of just about everyone. For Cuban expatriates, he is the personification of the devil. For most who still live on the island, he is about as close as one can get to sainthood. But I was surprised – very pleasantly surprised. Let me state my biases from the outset: I am a socialist; I have great admiration for Fidel Castro; I have great admiration for the Cuban people and their revolution; I have a significant level of disdain for the United States.  A thought that had burned in my mind before I arrived related to the recent change in leadership in the United States. No matter how much they might like to, I thought, the Cubans cannot ignore the US. So I put the question to almost everyone I met: ‘What do you think of Barack Obama, and do you expect the embargo might be removed or at least reduced?’ Every person I spoke with gave a variation of the same response: ‘He seems like a decent man, and we wish him well. But we really don’t care.’  They have survived almost 50 years of embargo, and they are prepared to endure another 50 years, if they must. They want only to live their lives on their own terms, in what they see as an egalitarian and just society. To be sure, they’d like to be wealthier and to have greater access to consumer goods. But they are wary of the price that would have to be paid in order to be in the good graces of the United States.  Democracy Cuba is a police state – there is no denying that. However, in any rational discussion of such things, intelligent people would concede that police states do have some virtues. For example, the streets are generally safe; and it is hard to see that as a negative. Society is orderly, with everyone knowing the limits of what is socially acceptable. Of course, police states also constrain freedom and, in severe cases, strangle it.  One thing that struck me immediately, though, was the lack of visible police or military on the streets. They were there, certainly, but in much fewer numbers (or much more discreet) than sixteen years ago. I was warned not to photograph police or soldiers, but I’ve heard a similar warning in almost every country I’ve visited.  One assumes, in a police state, that people are reticent to speak their minds. Not here. I heard much praise from Cubans for their revolution, their country, and their leaders – side by side with clearly spoken criticism. That hasn’t changed in the last 16 years.  I know in recent years there have been trials and sentencing of individuals named in our media as ‘dissidents’, but the charges they faced in Cuba were treason. I don’t know enough about Cuban law, or the nature of the allegations, to comment on whether these were fair charges. But given the lack of inhibition most Cubans seem to have in being openly critical of government shortcomings, I suspect the accusations probably had merit.  Cubans are not generally jailed or persecuted for criticizing their government – any visitor to Havana with a moderate grasp of Spanish will find Cubans on almost any street corner engaged in free and lively debate about their government’s mistakes and shortcomings. At the same time, though, the vast majority of Cubans fully support their revolution and would defend it to their death.  And lest you succumb to the oft-stated criticism that Cuba is a 'closed society', access to Western media – including Miami radio stations and CNN – is readily available in Cuba.  It's true that Cuba doesn’t grant exactly the same range of civil liberties that the US guarantees its citizens (on paper, if not in practice). But Cuba has been under siege by the most powerful and bellicose nation in the world for more than forty years. Additionally, the US has used its infinite supply of money to encourage individual Cubans to betray their own country. For Cuba not to always be on guard against these attempts to return it to US domination would mean suicide for the nation.  In any case, the notion that human rights are limited to formal civil liberties is unacceptable to Cubans, and to much of the world. Freedom of the press – albeit limited to a handful of mega-corporations – means little if the population is illiterate, not to mention starving and ravaged by fatal diseases. No nation in the world exceeds Cuba's achievements in eradicating illiteracy and homelessness, nor has more doctors per capita – with medical care being free.  But what about this idea of democracy? Cubans call their country socialist, but they also tend to believe that their system truly is ‘government of, by, and for the people’. For many people outside of Cuba, that might seem like nonsense; but let’s examine the facts.  There is voting in Cuba, but elections relate to the individuals running for election rather than to parties – because there is only one party. How is this any different from other nations claiming to be democratic? Again, I’ll use the United States as a benchmark:  Cubans vote in elections where they get to choose from a number of candidates who promise to uphold the socialist system and to continuously move it forward for the benefit of the people. Citizens in the United States get to vote for one of two parties, both of whom have only one abiding interest – representing the interests of corporations. In Cuba, anyone with skills and determination can rise to a position of influence within the government. In the United States, elected office is generally (although not exclusively) the domain of the rich. In Cuba, everything the government does is intended to benefit the people of Cuba. It is probably safe to say that government officials enjoy some perks not available to the average Cuban, but the gap between top and bottom in the United States is a chasm far too wide to ever be meaningfully bridged. Two of the easiest measures of whether a government really acts on behalf of the people can be found in health and education – Cuba excels at both (more on both below), and at far better cost than in most places, while the US record is appalling. Americans believe because they get to vote for parties, that puts them a cut above one-party states. And the US is fond of speaking about its democratic heritage, often reciting the phrase I noted above, ‘government of, by, and for the people’. Indeed, it has been quite active in trying to export its version of what makes a democracy, even though it doesn’t truly deliver democracy at home.  Purists will tell you that the US is not actually a democracy at all, it’s a republic. That is true, although I think it is fair to say the distinction is lost on most people. But the difference is clearly enunciated by the opposing views of government in Cuba and the United States. For the Cubans, ‘government of, by, and for the people’ means just that – skill and drive are all it takes to rise in government, where the representative will be expected to work toward the betterment of life for the greatest number of Cubans possible. For the United States, each individual person (‘the people’) is paramount, and the needs of society as a whole take second place. That is, Cuba is organized on the principle of caring for one’s fellow citizens, while the US is organized on the principle of bugger-your-neighbour.  The role of the Communist Party in Cuba is very different from that of political parties in the US and other Western nations – it is not an electoral party. Candidates for political office don’t run on party tickets, and one does not have to be a member of the Communist Party to stand for office. Instead, the role of the Party is to provide leadership; its purpose is to unify Cuba in the work of preserving independence and sovereignty, and providing a better life for all of Cuban people.  The Communist Party of Cuba was created in 1965. Its goal was not to seize power for a particular organization, but to ensure that the people have power in their own hands and that neo-colonial interests cannot take it back. The party monitors progress in achieving its goals of social equality, meeting the needs of all the people, and preserving the country’s sovereign right to make its own decisions, free of outside interference. It then makes proposals for how these goals can be reached.  And these decisions are made through a process of lively debate that reveal there are more political differences within the Communist Party of Cuba than there are between the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States.  In Cuba, the Communist Party is seen as an expression of the unity of the people, in keeping with the Cuban notion that they are one people.  Industry Cuba won its independence from Spain in 1898, after two tough wars. The US (in a pattern that repeated itself in the two great wars of the twentieth century) entered the battle late, took credit for victory, and took command of Cuban politics and industry for more than 60 years.  Prior to 1959, American tourists had traveled in droves to Havana, which had turned into a mafia-financed bordello – a playground of cheap booze, cheap prostitution, gambling, and glitzy nightclubs. Corruption was everywhere, and the gap between rich and poor grew too vast for a few wild-eyed youngsters to tolerate.  In 1959, a group of guerrillas, under the leadership of Fidel Castro, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, and Camilo Cienfuegos, succeeded in overthrowing the island’s dictator, Fulgencio Batista. The Americans fled, taking much of Cuba's resources with them.  In 1961, the American government organised (or, rather, disorganized – it is hard to imagine a more inept effort from what was supposedly the world’s greatest military power) a mercenary force in an attempt to overthrow Castro and return Cuba to a floating red-light district. To the embarrassment of the Americans, they suffered a drubbing at the Bay of Pigs (Playa Girón). Later that year, when Cuba declared itself socialist, the US cut off relations with the island and in 1962 imposed the trade embargo referenced above, including travel restrictions to Cuba, that continues in place today.  Cuba’s revolutionary government is credited with sweeping improvements in health care, education (see below for more about both). The economy is tentatively expanding, helped by the rapid rise in tourism which is currently the country's top source of foreign currency. Individual Cubans with an entrepreneurial spirit have profited from tourism as well. But there is much more to Cuban industry than merely tourist dollars. I was pointed to a huge natural gas-powered electrical generating facility which is the joint venture of Cuba and Canada. I saw a number of manufacturing facilities, some home-grown and some joint ventures with countries like China, Spain, Canada, and Venezuela.  About 37% of Cuba’s GDP comes from industry, which also employs more than a quarter of the population. Its largest trading partners are, in order, the Netherlands, Canada, China, and Spain. An expanding world-class biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry is poised to become Cuba’s largest source of foreign exchange. It is also becoming a haven for international patients seeking access to first-rate medical care.  However, it remains primarily an agricultural economy, and has undertaken a massive restructuring of food production and distribution since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, when I visited Cuba in 1993, the country was in the throes of the upheaval caused by the sudden decline of Soviet investment and aid. At that time, I was seeing Cuba at its lowest point.  But the recovery has been astonishing. Unused land within cities became market gardens, partly to grow sufficient food, but also to reduce transportation costs. There are still shortages of many things, to be sure – including food – so that Cubans refer to their island as a Third World nation. But they know they are miles ahead of most other poor countries. What they don’t try to do is to manufacture things that they can obtain by trade. The Cubans have learned to make a lot out of not much. Economists measure things by inputs and outputs, and Cuba can rightly brag that there isn’t much being wasted.  Poverty In my first trip to Cuba, I visited Santiago de Cuba, the city in which a triumphant Revolution was declared on January 1, 1959, and just along the coast from the American resort complex at Guantánamo. This time, I made it to Havana (La Habana).  Havana was founded in 1519 by the Spanish. By the 17th century, it had become one of the Caribbean's main centres for ship-building. Although it is today a sprawling metropolis of 2 million or so inhabitants, its old centre retains an interesting mix of Baroque and neoclassical monuments, with a mixed ensemble of private houses with arcades, balconies, wrought-iron gates, and internal courtyards. Old Havana was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1982, and today is a city that is replete with contradictions.  The exquisite architecture of Old Havana (Habana Vieja) makes it the  best-preserved colonial centre in the Americas, and strolling through its shady plazas or along the world famous Malecón (boardwalk) feels like stepping back in time. But not all is rosy: about 300 buildings a year become unfit for people, or collapse entirely. Visitors face the often jarring vision of brightly painted, restored buildings alongside crumbling ones.  But it is being restored, slowly and painstakingly, through a programme that diverts tourist dollars into renovation. These are dollars that are too scarce, but Cuba sees Havana as part of the country’s heritage, and worth the cost. They do complain, though, that while receiving the UNESCO designation is very nice, a little financial assistance for the restoration would be gratefully received. As in other areas of life, however, Cubans are making the best out of what they have.  Still, even worldly travellers suffer from culture shock in Havana, where Al Capone-era cars cruise alongside late-model Korean, Chinese, and German cars, children head off to school in nicely pressed uniforms, and old ladies smoking cigars as big as your arm sit on stoops across from posh eateries.  Throughout Cuba, the government requires people to help people. For instance, if you have access to a vehicle, you are obliged to pick up hitch-hikers if you have an empty seat. You can’t charge for that, and you can face fines for failing to pick up. Vehicles are generally in short supply, and hitch-hiking is a very common mode of travel. This is essentially an enforced ‘good-neighbour’ policy.  What do they do right In so-called ‘free’ countries, medical care is not free. In fact, its costs are often far out of reach for many people. Doctors are among the highest paid professionals, and many of them limit their practices to diseases of the rich. Cubans believe no one should be unable to get medical care – exceptionally good medical care – regardless of status or income.  And so there are medical centres and polyclinics throughout the island. Even in the smallest villages, people have access to on site medical care.  Cuba produces so many excellent doctors, that medical care has become one of its export goods. On a barter basis, Cuba provides Venezuela with doctors; Venezuela pays with oil.  When a large earthquake ravaged Pakistan in 2006, Cuba mobilized a team of doctors and field hospitals and showed up to help, no questions asked. Knowing that many Pakistani women would be unwilling to accept medical care from men, Cuba ensured that about half the doctors dispatched were women. Interestingly, when Cuba offered medical assistance to American victims of Hurricane Katrina, the US government ignored them.  As part of the medical system in Cuba, there is a large and growing biotechnology sector that is increasingly earning foreign currency for the nation. In fact, the reputation of medical services in Cuba has prompted many people from around the world to visit the island for medical attention.  It is always difficult to quantify or qualify if medical care is good, better, or indifferent. But one reasonable marker might be life expectancy. Cubans have a life expectancy that is close to that of the US and Canada, and far ahead of most Third World countries. That probably speaks for itself.  In so-called ‘free’ countries, everyone pays for education. In Cuba, nobody does. Large numbers of Cubans were illiterate at the time of the revolution, and changing that was one of the Castro government’s earliest priorities. Today, they are among the most literate – and best educated – people in the world. Some of that stems from the Cuban commitment to superior teacher training. Teachers are rigorously educated, and there is no sense that the instructor is just a lesson or two ahead of the pupil (as I can remember from my own schooldays in Toronto). For that reason, Cubans are eager to send their children to school – they know the kids will learn.  There are 22 universities, all with free enrolment. The only barrier a student faces to becoming highly educated, is his or her own ability.  Cuba spends around 20% of its GDP on education, about three times more than Canada which has three times the population.  In so-called ‘free’ countries, unemployment rates flow up and down at the whim of business. In Cuba, employment is close to universal. To be sure, much of that employment is subsidized by the government; but they see employed people as being of far greater value to society, and to themselves, than collecting welfare. Cuba’s economy is certainly strained, so there is often difficulty in finding funds to pay for all these working people. But a working class is much more satisfying than an idle class.  And if there is one thing Cuba does better than anyone, it is to cope with disaster. Year after year there is a four-to-five month threat from hurricanes. But they have developed superb evacuation procedures, and everyone gets out alive. [In each major hit, there is usually someone who dies; but in every case, it turns out that they had returned to areas that were not yet declared safe, against orders.]  In 2008, Cuba was battered by Hurricanes Gustav, Ike, and Paloma. It was a particularly bad year, and the damage throughout the island was massive. So how many homeless Cuban’s are there? None. Barring the handful of fools who didn’t follow instructions, everyone survived, and everyone has a place to live. In some cases, it is temporary; but the government feeds and houses these people while everyone goes about the business of picking up the pieces. And the government rebuilds homes for those who lost houses, at no cost to the people.  Compare that to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and the continued turmoil remaining almost four years after the event. It seems the US government, and FEMA, could learn a thing or to from Cuba.  Friends Abroad In April 2001, World Bank President James Wolfensohn praised Cuba for doing "a great job" in providing for the social welfare of the Cuban people. His remarks seemed to signal a growing appreciation within the Bank for Cuba’s social record. This is despite recognition that Havana’s economic policies are virtually the antithesis of the ‘Washington Consensus’, which has dominated the Bank's policy advice for years. Some senior Bank officers even go so far as to suggest that other developing countries should take a very close look at Cuba’s performance.  Most nations of the world look to Cuba as an example of what even a small, relatively poor country can do to improve the lives of its people. Virtually all of them firmly support Cuba’s right to chart its own course as a sovereign nation, without external interference.  The US is becoming increasingly isolated in its attempts to dictate the path and the future of its tiny neighbour. In May 2001, for the first time since 1947, the US was voted off the United Nations Human Rights Commission, largely because of its intransigence with regard to Cuba.  Critics on the Left Cuba has its critics, even within the socialist movement. There are purists who write that Fidel Castro falsely presented his regime as a workers’ state. They claim that the apparent success of his revolution, meant that a short-cut had emerged, and that Castro had demonstrated it wasn’t necessary to follow the Trotskyist paradigm which requires the working class to seize control. These critics will argue that Castro had shown that socialism could be achieved by exchanging the intervention of an active and leading working class with small groups of armed men, conducting guerrilla warfare and creating a new state.  In their view, the working class and the rest of the oppressed masses would be reduced to little more than passive bystanders if revolution did not follow the Trotskyist path. Those critics will also point to a series of catastrophes throughout Latin America, resulting from emulation of Castro. They say that the promotion of guerrilla actions separated revolutionary younger people from the working class as a whole, leading to a series of defeats and the rise of brutal military dictatorships over most of the continent.  And they will complain that Cuba was not created by the working class taking power at all, but by the imposition of a state imposed from above by Castro and his allies. As proof of the inadequacy of this result, they note that Castro’s Cuba has never allowed independent organs of workers’ power, and has exercised a ruthless repression of challenges to the domination of the Castro brothers.  Grudgingly, they acknowledge that Raul Castro, in a speech made at the fiftieth anniversary of the revolution, seems to grasp that there is an incipient renewal of the class struggle for socialism in Latin America, and even perhaps on a world scale.  They predict that Cuban youth will not be immune to the global radicalization being unleashed by the current world economic calamity, and they sense that the time for a true worker’s revolution in Cuba might not be distant. I am not going to debate those issues with socialist critics; I accept that one can get to the same goal by many paths. Nor do I think it is possible to predict if Cuban workers will rise up when Fidel is dead.  The future This remains hazy at present. Fidel Castro stepped down from office in February 2008 due to ill health, with his brother Raul later being elected to take his place. Changes have been tentative, so far, although it is not at all clear if that is out of respect for the elder brother, who still remains mentally vibrant and very much alive.  Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban economy was reduced by more than 80%. As a result, some limited private enterprise was tolerated and the tourism industry was marketed heavily. The country doesn’t appear to see any reason to reduce tourism, but the tolerance of private enterprise was intended to be temporary. It is beginning to appear that it is permanent, and expanding. This may not be bad, but it gives the government less of a grip on the economy and makes it harder to fund the astounding array of services provided to Cubans at little or no cost.  Like it or not, it appears some measure of a market economy will expand in Cuba. Although many Cubans might be anxious for both political and economic reforms, it is hard to know what price they will be willing to pay for it. It is surely very attractive to them to derive greater benefit from their substantial talents, and to have a greater opportunity to express themselves politically both within and without Cuba.  But no one I met suggested for a moment that they would be willing to accept reforms that would threaten all the great achievements of the revolution. They have gained for themselves universal health care, excellent schools, a thriving pharmaceutical industry, an astounding level of literacy, longevity better than many First World countries, and a nearly total elimination of distinction based on race or class.  Cubans did pay a price for their revolution, perhaps most in having divided families as people fled to the US in the early 1960s. And they continue to face scarcity. But they do enjoy benefits like guaranteed medical care, housing, education and food, albeit not as much as they might have enjoyed while the Soviet Union still stood.  Like virtually everyone else, Cubans are facing the turmoil of a rapidly collapsing (or at least tottering) world economy. Their ability to manage when they’re starting from a position of weakness will surely test their mettle. But these are a resilient people. Their story is far from over. © Copyright 2009 by AxisofLogic.com This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you!   Read his Bio and More Articles by Paul Richard Harris, Axis of Logic editor and columnist, based in Canada.  He can be reached at paul@axisoflogic.com.